Denial of service attacks rocket

Firms accused of complacency over web defences

The second half of 2010 saw a steep rise in the incidence of web attacks that caused downtime, according to a new report, with denial of service attacks up 22 per cent from the previous six months.

While much of this activity was related to hacktivist group Anonymous, it also revealed that many firms are paying scant attention to the defence of their web application architecture, the Web Hacking Incident Database (WHID) report from security firm Trustwave concluded.

The main goals for hackers include causing downtime or defacing web sites, but companies are increasingly finding that attacks lead to information being stolen, malware being planted on their site and misleading information being displayed.

"Cyber criminals never stop trying to exploit web applications," warned Nicholas Percoco, head of Trustwave’s research arm, SpiderLabs.

The WHID provides a record of publicly reported incidents of web attacks, which explains why the Anonymous attacks had such an impact.

Members of Anonymous launched several high-profile web attacks against companies that had withdrawn services from whistleblowing web site Wikileaks, including Visa and Mastercard.